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CNL Lunch Talks

Stacey Conroy

Children's Knowledge of Principle C in Discourse

Thursday December 2, 2004, 12:30 PM, 3416 Marie Mount Hall

 

In the literature, Principle C has been defined for use within sentences (or "everywhere", although certainly not over the whole paragraph). What do we do when a pronoun and an r-expression are in different fragments?

Person A: I know where he went!

Person B: Yeah, me too! To Chuckie's House.

It is not immediately clear whether or not Principle C can apply across fragments. I will explore different fragment theories, and also look into different frameworks to see what is said about how children learn and interpret such constructions. (I'll spoil the secret...kids know that Principle C is at work here!) Using a Truth Value Judgment Task, I will determine that children 1) know Principle C, even across a discourse and 2) suggest what type of fragment theory is on that market that would be explained by the results. Done in conjunction with Rozz Thornton.